October 7 2002

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Tom Frakes and Erik Burklin love law and order. They represent a new generation of evangelicals who believe it is better to operate openly and legally rather than underground in China.

Frakes's Training Evangelistic Leadership (TEL)-China educates non-Christian university students about Christianity. While in China, Frakes worships at a state-licensed church in Guangzhou, a city in southern China near Hong Kong. His congregation, associated with the government's Three Self Patriotic Movement, is evangelical in theology and outreach.

Burklin runs China Partner, a ministry founded by his father, Werner. The organization provides teachers and resources to Three Self seminaries and Bible institutes. Six months ago, China Partner helped launch a new Bible institute in Nanchang, Jiangxi, in central China. The Nanchang Bible Institute expects to triple its current enrollment to 240 by 2007.

More Western missions groups are looking for ways to work legally in China. There are 51 American Protestant missions agencies working inside China, according to the Evangelism and Missions Information Service. These agencies provide a wide range of officially permitted services, from Bible publishing and English-language instruction to health care and adoption.

For years the National Council of Churches has brokered relationships between American mainline Protestants and China's official church. The ncc also generated controversy by disputing reports of persecution of Christians in China. Andrew Young, future ncc president and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said he found "no evidence" of persecution of Christians on his travels in China in 1998.

On the other hand, since the 1949 communist revolution, evangelicals have smuggled Bibles ...